SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2019, Issue No. 44
December 1, 2019

Secrecy News Blog: https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/

PENTAGON MUST PRODUCE PLAN FOR DECLASSIFICATION

The Department of Defense must explain by early next year how it is going to meet its obligations to declassify a growing backlog of classified records, Congress said this week.

A provision (sect. 1759) in the new House-Senate conference version of the FY2020 national defense authorization act requires the Pentagon to prepare a report including:

* a plan to achieve legally mandated historical declassification requirements and reduce backlogs;

* a plan to incorporate new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that would increase productivity and reduce the cost of implementing such a plan;

* a detailed assessment of the declassified documents released in the past three years along with an estimate of how many will be released in the next three years;

* other policy and resource options for reducing backlogs of classified documents awaiting declassification.

While the new legislative language is a welcome acknowledgment of a persistent problem, it does not by itself significantly advance a solution. In particular, the legislation does not authorize any new funds for declassification or for development of new declassification technologies, which are not yet mature. Nor does it define an alternative in the event that DoD proves unable to meet its declassification obligations.

In a prior draft adopted by the House of Representatives, the CIA and the State Department would also have been required to prepare similar reports. But those requirements were dropped in the final bill.

"The U.S. government's system for declassifying and processing historical records has reached a state of crisis," wrote William Burr of the National Security Archive lately. See "Trapped in the Archives," Foreign Affairs, November 29, 2019.

JASON SCIENCE ADVISORY PANEL PRESERVED

Congress has directed the Department of Defense to reach an "arrangement with the JASON scientific advisory group to conduct national security studies and analyses."

Last spring DoD officials sought to let the existing contract with the JASONs lapse, leaving the panel without a sponsor and threatening its continued viability. The new legislation rejects that move, although it anticipates that the JASON contract will now be managed by the DoD Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment instead of by Defense Research and Engineering.

"The conferees expect the [new] arrangement or contract to be structured . . . similar to previous contracts for JASON research studies," the NDAA conference report said.

The JASON panel is widely esteemed as a source of independent scientific expertise that is relatively free of institutional bias. Its reports are often able to provide insight into challenging technological problems of various kinds.

The FY2020 defense authorization bill calls for new JASON assessments of electronic warfare programs, and of options for replacement of the W78 warhead.

In 2019 the JASONs performed studies -- which have not yet been publicly released -- on Pit Aging (NNSA), Bio Threats (DOE), and Fundamental Research Security (NSF), among others.

DOD TO REPORT ON NUKE PROGRAMS OF US, RUSSIA, CHINA

In a challenge to Pentagon secrecy, Congress has told the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to prepare an unclassified report on the nuclear weapons programs of the United States, Russia and China.

The requirement was included in the new House-Senate conference version of the FY2020 defense authorization act (sect. 1676).

The mandated report must include an assessment of "the current and planned nuclear systems" of the three nations, including "research and development timelines, deployment timelines, and force size."

The Pentagon has been reluctant to issue its own unclassified estimates of foreign nuclear programs. Earlier this year DoD even refused to declassify the current size of the US nuclear stockpile, though it had previously done so every year since 2010.

The newly required report must be produced in unclassified form, Congress directed, though it may include a classified annex.

"Across the Department of Defense, basic information is becoming harder to find," wrote Jason Paladino of the Project on Government Oversight in "The Pentagon's War on Transparency," December 5, 2019.

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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

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